60 seconds on ushahidi , IHUB, joywo and

Ushahidi started as an ad-hoc group of Kenyan bloggers hammering out code in a couple of days from various locations, trying to figure out a way to gather more and better information about the 2008 post-election violence in Kenya.Ushahidi is a non-profit technology company that builds open source platforms to help citizens, journalists, organizations, governments, and others gather, manage, analyze, and visualize crowdsourced data. Our tools have been used by tens of thousands of individuals and organizations fighting for social causes in over 159 countries — whether for monitoring corruption in Zimbabwe, gathering real-time data on local poverty issues, or giving people a voice in the Syrian crisis. Everyone at Ushahidi comes to work here because we know that every day people around the world use the tools we build to improve the lives of millions. In other words, in the fight for a better world, we aren’t 007, we’re Q. Our team tends to think big and rewards creativity and an entrepreneurial attitude. Over the past six years, we have also built the iHub – the tech community hub in Nairobi, the BRCK – a redesign of connectivity for the developing world, and other projects like Savannah Fund, AfriLabs, and Crisis Mappers. Our ethos – we don’t just build products, we solve problems.

Today Ushahidi’s mission is the change the way information flows in the world and empower people to make an impact with open source technologies, cross-sector partnerships, and ground-breaking ventures.

Ushahidi is responsible for founding the iHub, a technology hub in Nairobi which has helped build the technology community in East Africa, growing to over 14,000 members, has incubated 150 tech startups that have created over 1000 jobs. Ushahidi, together with partners Hivos and the Institute of Development Studies, implements the Making all Voices Count Grand Challenge, a $55 million fund which focuses global attention on creative and cutting-edge solutions to transform the relationship between citizens and their governments including seeding innovative solutions.

Lastly, as a group of technologists spread around the world who get really frustrated when the internet doesn’t work, Ushahidi built and spun out BRCK, which builds rugged internet for people and things.At Ushahidi, it isn’t just about building software, it is about solving problems. With Ushahidi we build open source software tools, at BRCK we build a platform for access to the web, and iHub we help build the Kenyan tech sector by creating a community with access to services like the mLab, UX lab, and Gearbox. We build these organizations because we want to see more stories like Ushahidi’s in the world.

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Chris Macrae washington DC region 240 316 8157 linkedin 9500 - Partners in world record book and games of job creation